OGs: Deep Down (37 page)

“I can pay my way,” she insisted, still not comfortable with him buying it.

“I know, baby. I’ve seen your paychecks. But I wanted this to be my present to you.”

She wasn’t going to fight Mike about money. It was useless. “Thank you, my love. I’ll foot the bill for the renovation of this place though.” He was going to complain, but she forged on. “If Cole doesn’t take my money, I’ll fire him. If you dare to pay Cole behind my back, I’ll…I’ll…withhold sex from you,” she finally decided.

He chuckled. “Not happening. Not in a million years.”

She pouted. True. She’d been ready to hump him against one of the stone columns near the exposed window. What were the chances she could make good on her word? Nil. “Okay. I’ll rent the place to someone else and go back to teach at your gym. Dressed in tiny bikinis. Let’s see what that does to your peace of mind.”

“Okay,” he accepted grumpily. “You pay for the renovations.”

“I’m going to miss being at the gym, but with my own studio, I can install some poles. I’ve had so many girls asking for pole-dancing classes. I even thought about asking Sinful to let us rent Bottoms Up in the mornings for the lessons. No need now.”

Mike winced. “You install poles, I’m hiring Sinful’s bouncers. You will need them. And Wata. And we’re boarding up the windows. Fuck natural light.”

Kyra laughed and kissed his frown away. Whatever they did, they would find a way to make it work. Their way. Together.

Chapter Twenty

Two months later

Lake Club Resort

“Let’s light up, shall we?” Rebecca asked, reaching for the big cigars on the table.

Except for the occasional cigarette when the OGs were young, they’d never liked smoking, not even when it was in fashion and supposedly harmless, but this was a special occasion. Mike’s wedding. Rebecca had been waiting for this a long, long time.

Greta brought the cigar to her mouth and drew in, releasing the smoke before she could take it into her lungs. She repeated it a couple of times, a rather surprised look on her face. “I somehow remembered these things tasting foul. They are not so bad.”

Wilma snorted. “That’s because our taste buds and sense of smell degenerated exponentially after seventy.”

Rebecca and Greta pondered for a second and then assented. “Makes sense.”

They sat there for a while, puffing away, watching from the patio doors as the guests danced and celebrated.

Greta sighed. “I love weddings.”

“Me too. Six to two, though.”

“What?”

“This year,” Wilma explained. “Six funerals, two weddings.”

Yeah. Bad odds. Still, two weddings outweighed six funerals. Heck, Mike’s wedding alone outweighed anything bad that had happened in the last years. Rebecca loved her son and Amanda, whom she considered her daughter, adored all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but Mike had always held a special place in her heart. Seeing him standing at the altar, spellbound, smiling from ear to ear, waiting as Kyra walked down the aisle with Sam, had been worth all the OGs’ scheming.

“We did well,” Rebecca murmured.

Wilma looked at her and smiled. The three of them had known each other over sixty years. With the exception of Wilma’s sometimes-indecipherable text messages, they didn’t need many words to understand each other. “Yes, we did. What would you have done if locking them together under false pretenses in the community center hadn’t worked?”

“Oh, I had a plan B. And a C and D.” She’d known Kyra and Mike only needed a nudge in the right direction, but she wouldn’t have been against giving them the mother of all shoves. Down a cliff if need be. They had been made for each other. Life was too precious to be wasting a single moment, let alone years. “Those were…more complicated. We would’ve had to claim temporary insanity and God only knows what to get away with them, but in this case, the end justified the means. Besides, what can they do to us, right?”

Both her friends snorted. “Right.”

They sat in silence, watching and smoking, until Rachel approached them and sat down. “Jeez. There’s more security here than at Fort Knox.”

The wedding had taken place in Alden’s old church, like Mike’s parents’ ceremony. Like Rebecca’s. The banquet had been moved to the Lake Club Resort, though, the only place in the vicinity capable of handling the event. It wasn’t as if there were a lot of guests; heck, there was no one from Kyra’s family, but aside from all Kyra’s colleagues from
Shake Your Booty
and Amantis, there was a very special, very famous matron of honor whose scary husband didn’t like leaving anything to chance. Add that to almost all Alden’s inhabitants and the whole staff of Bottoms Up, significant others included, like they liked to be called nowadays, and well, maybe there was a reason for all those men with hearing aids and the not so discreet metal detector at the main entrance.

“Greta was hoping for a frisk. That’s why she wore all that metal,” Wilma explained to her granddaughter, pointing at Greta’s big earrings. “But didn’t happen. I guess they figured the beeping was coming from a prosthesis.”

“I was not,” Greta interjected. “It was you who already had your arms up.”

Rachel broke into laughter.

“I’m sure you know those things kill,” Rachel said, pointing at the cigars. “And don’t tell me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, because that is a myth.”

Wilma winked at her. “At our age, what doesn’t kill us doesn’t work, honey.”

“Yeah,” Greta added. “LOLO.”

“LOLO?”

“You know, carpe diem,” Wilma explained.

Rachel shook her head, chuckling. “You guys mean YOLO, ‘you only live once,’ not LOLO. Now I understand why you say LOLO every time you go take a shower.”

“Well, trying to take a shower without breaking a bone is like
Mission: Impossible
.”

“Keeping you out of trouble is
Mission: Impossible
,” Rachel muttered.

At that moment there were some cheers, and they turned to see Kyra and Mike kissing.

“Such a fantastic couple,” Rachel said. “I’m so happy for them.”

“You know you’re next, right?” Wilma told her granddaughter.

“Forget it, Grandma. All of you.”

Greta shrugged. “We are on a roll. We may as well keep going.”

“Don’t you dare,” Rachel said, looking at each and every one of them. “You keep me out of your shenanigans. It’s bad enough I’m on the sheriff’s cell’s speed dial because of you. No way am I gonna let you interfere in my love life.”

“Interfere in what? You don’t have a love life,” Wilma said, patting her arm.

“And we are keeping it that way.”

“As you say,” the three of them replied.

They might have to work on their deadpan faces, because Rachel clearly wasn’t convinced at all.

“Do I have to remind you, ladies, you are motorized because of me?”

Greta looked at Rachel, appalled. “Are you threatening your grandma with taking her car away?”

“I’m threatening all of you with that. And I’ll confiscate her driver’s license and keep it somewhere safer than where I kept the Taser,” she finished, giving Wilma a reproving glare.

Rachel was obviously still mad. Not because Wilma had taken it and helped save Kyra from her ex-husband and his thugs, but because since then she’d “borrowed” it again and managed to misfire it twice, one of which ended up with Rachel again in the sheriff’s office, explaining…well, the unexplainable.

Wilma rolled her eyes. “You know we know you wouldn’t do that.”

No, Rachel wouldn’t. She’d been furious when Greta’s son had taken her car away. Said taking a person’s car away was like cutting her wings. And when the authorities had confiscated Rebecca’s license, Rachel had made a ruckus, which again hadn’t made her many friends at the sheriff’s office.

Rachel stared at them. “Maybe, but are you ready to mess with the person who services your only means of transportation?”

“Come on, we wouldn’t do anything crazy.”

Rachel snorted.

Yes, their deadpan faces needed a brushup.

“Okay, maybe, but we would be thinking of your well-being if we did,” Wilma said softly.

“Grandma, I’m okay.” She gave Wilma a kiss on her cheek, then, after kissing Greta and Rebecca, she left.

Rebecca watched Rachel disappearing into the dancing crowd.

“She’s not okay,” Wilma said.

“Nope,” both Greta and Rebecca replied.

Wilma turned to her friends. “So are we on?”

There was only one possible response. “LOLO.”

Epilogue

Three and a half years later

Alden’s Dance Factory

“To the girls,” someone shouted as glasses were raised everywhere. “And to Kyra.”

“Yeah!” several people seconded.

Kyra’s dance studio filled with loud cheers and applause, as what seemed to be the whole town was celebrating another victory of the Alden’s 6.

Mike tried to navigate the crowd, a beer in one hand, two cups of soda in the other. The Dance Factory had been a huge hit since day one, but Mike couldn’t recall when the place had been this full. Hell, not even the day when the pole-dancing classes had started. Although it had been a close second.

Since he’d moved to the tables to fetch something to drink, the amount of people in the studio had grown even bigger. All his family was there and the families of the six girls. The Bowens too.

Mike looked proudly at what Kyra had accomplished. It hadn’t even been four years, and this place was already Alden’s epicenter. It had started with Kyra alone there, but between rehearsing choreography for Amantis’s dancers and the classes she’d taught before at the gym, she’d soon run out of time, so Sara had come to help. Now his little sister was in charge of the aerobics, and Red was the Pilates instructor. Never mind how busy Kyra was, she’d kept the dance classes, especially for kids.

She had left for LA with the girls yesterday, and right away the wheels had started to turn. His grandma, Sara, Angie, and many others had taken over the studio, decorating it and hanging welcome banners. Taking care of the drinks, the snacks.

As he scouted around for his wife, he saw Sam and her friends in the far corner, rehearsing the dance they were performing tomorrow, at the town’s festival, and moved toward them.

“Dad! Watch our dance!”

“Sure, baby girl,” he said. Soon after the wedding, Sam had started calling him Dad. The first time had been a slip; she’d woken him up one night, quite drowsy, and had asked him for water.

“Thanks, Dad,”
she’d whispered as he was carrying her back to bed.

And he’d been Dad to her ever since.

She signaled to Marcy and the other girls, and they started their performance. It clashed totally with the music that was being played, but they looked good. As good as all the other fifty times he’d seen her dancing it this past week.

Sam was ten years old and still had him wrapped around her little finger. Him, and the rest of the town.

“What do you think?”

“Perfect,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Remember that we have the karate exhibition after the dance.”

“I don’t need to rehearse for that,” she said smugly.

He chuckled but said nothing. At dancing she’d improved a lot in three years. With karate she’d been a natural since the very beginning.

He handed her one of the sodas. “This is for you, baby girl. Now I have to find your mom.”

He had left her talking with Lisa, but now his sister was dancing with Hank. At that moment he caught her eye and, mouthing, asked about Kyra.

His sister gestured toward the patio.

Lisa and Kyra had had a rocky start. Although neither one had admitted to anything and claimed all was good, he’d felt the tension. Little by little, though, things had gotten better. Much, much better. And now, more times than not, when Lisa called, it was to talk to Kyra and not to him.

Mike made his way to the back, to the small patio, where Kyra had had a Japanese stone garden and a fountain installed. The chill-out area, she’d called it jokingly.

He loved what she’d done with the whole place. It would have taken several months to have it finished to her specifications, but Cole had had it ready in record time. Not only because Mike’s ex-boss was good and efficient, but also because the last thing Cole wanted was Christy doing the exotic aerobics at Haddican’s any longer than absolutely necessary. And Kyra had gotten to pay for everything too, threatening Cole the same way she’d threatened him, that if any bills got diverted to Mike, she would stop everything and continue her lessons in the gym.

As he entered the patio, Kyra turned around and smiled. “Here’s my husband,” she said, holding her hand out to him.

Husband.

No matter how many times he’d heard Kyra calling him that, it never failed to punch him in the gut.

It had the same effect as seeing their beautiful one-year-old son in her arms.

Kyra had toured two summers with Amantis after their wedding, dividing the rest of the time between the dance studio and
Shake Your Booty
, Sara and Red taking over her classes when she was away. Kyra had made it clear her availability for touring would depend on Mike, and he’d insisted on her continuing with Amantis. It had been hard to spend three months apart, but they’d managed. He’d joined her for a month every tour, and then they’d flown back and forth whenever they had free time.

After Mike had come in to see the last show of the season, Kyra had presented him with a velvety box.

“Got something for you,”
she’d said, blushing like a teenager.

He’d lifted his brow.
“Baby, what’s this?”

“Just open it.”

When he did, he found…a matchstick-sized rod?
“Love it, kitten. I don’t have one. Thank you.”

She’d chuckled.
“You don’t know what this is, do you?”

No fucking clue.

She’d lifted her sleeve and shown him the inside of her upper arm.
“Touch.”

It had taken him a second, but then he’d realized the contraceptive implant she’d had under her skin was gone.

“I got it removed,”
she’d whispered.

Mike had tried to swallow, but his mouth had been too dry. That had been a subject he hadn’t wanted to broach, even though every time he’d felt the implant under his fingertips, his chest had clenched. But it was her decision. He couldn’t love Sam more if she was his own blood, but he’d always wanted a big family, which would not mesh together with her career.